


A Good Girl

by the_original_starfruit



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Experimental writing, F/F, Human AU, an idea i've had for a while now ??, dog POV, gays with big crushes as usual, pumpkin is a pure pup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 09:11:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_starfruit/pseuds/the_original_starfruit
Summary: Pumpkin was not thrilled to be left outside the people-food store, until a short human came to give her some water and talk to Lapis.





	A Good Girl

Pumpkin quite liked her life, and her Person.

     Her Person’s name was Lapis, from what she had heard other humans say, and she was a small and kind Person, with blue hair and gentle brown hands. She never wore shoes, and never spoke loudly. She gave Pumpkin food, and baths, and pulled one end of her chew-toy, and took her for long walks to the beach and down the hot streets and to the people-food store. But it was more than that, it was _better;_ she was just Pumpkin’s, as Pumpkin was hers. So sometimes, when Lapis ripped and kicked the canvases she worked on, or came home late and wobbly, smelling sharp and unfamiliar, Pumpkin watched the front door until Lapis could get up again. And when Lapis cried crumpled-up on her bed, the blue salt smell of her sadness filling up the room, Pumpkin would jump up quietly next to her and lick her face until she smiled and said _Good Girl._

     They had a little home in the city, one room, filled with paint and brushes, and stained rags that Pumpkin liked to chew in her spare time. There was a skinny bed, where they both slept every night, Pumpkin curled up at the foot. There was a kitchen but no table, which meant Lapis ate her people-food with her legs pulled up on the counter, or, occasionally, the couch. This was better because then Pumpkin could run her nose along the floor later and find little bits of things, salty popcorn and crisp bits of carrot and sandwich crusts and cupcake wrappers.

     When they went out, Pumpkin liked the park best – a hundred thousand different smells, of car exhaust and trees and other dogs and squirrels, of metal and flowers and food and pigeons and people. There were always people and their little people-pups, with small grubby hands, who would pet Pumpkin and throw her ball, and only rarely pulled her fur or her ears. She tried her best to be patient. She liked it less when Lapis took her to the people-food store, because then she had to sit outside on the sidewalk with her leash tied to a signpost and her eyes trained on the wide window at the bustle inside. She always felt a tug of discomfort when Lapis went in there without her, something telling her to get up, chew through her leash, and go through the whooshing doors that she knew would open for her on their own. But she never did, because she also knew she was a Good Girl.

   She was outside the people-food store, Lapis was inside, and it was summer. It had been cool when they left the house in morning, the building shadows lying long and dark across the street, but now the sun was high and the breeze was dead. Heat baked off the black road like ripples on a pond. Pumpkin nosed around, finding a bit of stale bun that had once housed a long-lost sausage, and she ate it. She watched the people walking past, seeing only long naked legs. She was uncomfortable on the rough sidewalk, feeling her paw pads burn with the sun heat warming her fur. She let her tongue loll out.

     When a pair of legs slowed and stopped a while later, Pumpkin looked up. The person was so short that for a moment Pumpkin thought she was a people-pup, but then she crouched down, politely holding out her hand to be sniffed, and Pumpkin knew she was at least as old as Lapis. Her smell was an iron swing-set in the sun, abandoned pennies. Spicy and warm and overall friendly, but tired underneath.

     “Hello,” the person said, her voice coming through her nose like the gray honk of a goose. Pumpkin liked that voice. She wagged her tail. “What are you doing out here, boy?”

     She opened her backpack and rummaged around for something that Pumpkin hoped was people-food. She caught a jumble of smells from the bag, something sweet and coppery, a soft peanut-butter sandwich, the eye-watering cold of mint gum, and something gingery and sharp that she knew was cat. Something small and metal dropped from a disturbed pocket, clinking on the pavement, and Pumpkin nosed it. It smelled of the short person’s hands.

     Short Person poured something carefully into her palm and offered it. Pumpkin smelled it, then lapped up the cool water, giving an extra lick to the girl’s warm fingers in gratitude.

     Finally, Lapis came out, her brown paper bag held tightly to her side. Pumpkin scrambled up, her tail whipping back and forth. She knew Lapis hadn’t meant to be in the store as long as she had, because she could smell the rumpled stress-smell rolling off her in sour waves. Pumpkin licked her hand and walked in a circle as Lapis untied her leash from the pole and wrapped the end around her wrist.

     Short Person had stood up as well. As Lapis turned to walk away, she started forward and spoke in her goose-voice.

     “Excuse me.”

Lapis stopped, shifting the bag to the crook of her arm. She sighed, and Pumpkin felt the stress-smell again, the acridity making her tail droop.

     “I couldn’t help but notice your dog,” Short Person continued, and Pumpkin pricked her ears, “and the conditions he was in were simply inhumane. It’s ninety degrees out, and he was lying on the sidewalk with all that fur and no water.”

     Pumpkin wagged her tail, because she was fine. But she smelled something angry coming off of Lapis now, the stress mixing with a peppery red.

     “I’m sorry the grocery store won’t let me bring my dog inside, I’m sorry _she_ was outside in the heat because there was a line six miles long, and I’m sorry some good samaritan had to come along and unstick her nose from a book just to tell me what a bad job I’m doing taking care of my dog.”

     Short Person stepped back, and Pumpkin smelled bad feelings rolling off her now as well.

     “Oh, forgive me,” she said, and the words she was saying didn’t match her sharp smell at all, “My eyes are open to my erroneous ways. Next time I see a dog outside a store, I’ll just leave it to overheat and die.”

     Lapis turned away without saying anything else, but Pumpkin felt her hand tighten around the leash, tension in the harness pulling uncomfortably at her shoulders.

     “Fuck people, honestly,” she muttered, and Short Person swept away in the opposite direction. “You were fine, weren’t you, girl?”

     Pumpkin whined slightly at the anger in Lapis’s tone, wagging the tip of her tail, when something shiny caught her eye on the sidewalk. It was metal – and it smelled like Short Person’s hands – and it had dropped from her bag before. Pumpkin lunged forward and grabbed it as Lapis started in the other direction, giving a gentle tug on the leash before stopping and realizing Pumpkin had something in her mouth.

     _“No,_ Pumpkin, don’t eat trash – drop it – wh – keys?” she said blankly, and Pumpkin looked pointedly in the direction Short Person had gone.

     “Ah, shit,” Lapis muttered, and Pumpkin’s heart leapt as she picked up the keys and tugged the leash.

     They started out walking quickly, but ended up nearly running to catch up to Short Person before she crossed the street. Lapis called out as they approached, and Pumpkin panted, enjoying the pace even as the heat pounded through the sole of her paws.

     “Hey!” Lapis said, out of breath, and Short Person turned, her surprise scenting the air a lemony yellow. “You, uh. I think you dropped these. Or Pumpkin thinks you dropped these, at least.”

     Short Person looked down at Pumpkin in amazement as Lapis plopped the keys into her palm. Pumpkin wagged her tail and grinned, smelling good feelings bloom like summer flowers.

     “Wow, thanks,” she said, “Nice of you to track me down and give these back. Uncommonly nice, in fact.” She squinted up at Lapis and stuck her hand out to shake. “Peridot.”

     Lapis shrugged, and the tension was gone from the leash and her shoulders.

“Lapis, and don’t let it get to your head. Pumpkin’s the uncommonly nice one – I have a reputation to uphold.”

     The air was light again, finally, as Short Person’s – Peridot’s – laughter put them all at ease. Pumpkin sniffed at the street-smell amalgam on the corner, her ears pricked back to listen to the mostly understood words.

     “I’ll keep that in mind,” Peridot teased, “a girl of below average niceness with an uncommonly nice dog. I’m, ah, sorry, by the way. Nobody I know who owns a dog would actually leave her outside that long on purpose, and I,” she hesitated, “guess I jumped to conclusions.”

     Pumpkin felt it in the leash as Lapis shrugged again.

“I mean, wanting a dog to be happy is a pretty good conclusion to jump to,” she said, and Peridot laughed.

     “No, really. I could have just given your dog water and moved on with my life – but for some reason I’m glad I didn’t.” Peridot patted Pumpkin’s head. “Must be a desire to build a close relationship with Pumpkin here.”

   Lapis smiled, finally, and everything was alright again in Pumpkin’s world. She wagged harder but no one seemed to be paying her any attention.

     “You seem kind of soppy for a science nerd,” Lapis was saying, gesturing to the book in the other girl’s hand, and Peridot laughed again.

     “You haven’t even seen me cry at _Star Wars.”_

They both laughed, and Pumpkin felt her tail wag practically off with the sound. Since when had Lapis smelled like this, the tense red of her sometimes anger faded and sweetened to a soft, rosy pink?

     “Do you want to get a coffee?” Peridot blurted, and Lapis’s smile widened.

“Depends,” she said, and Pumpkin finally felt the attention shift back to her. She wagged her tail harder than ever. “What do you think, girl? Will you be okay if we find a spot for you to lie in the shade and get some water this time?”

     She whuffed slightly, not quite a bark, and blinked benignly her approval. The air between them smelled so nice.

     Lapis nodded solemnly.

“We have the permission of our fine chaperone. You want to go to that place on Laurel Avenue? They have some killer iced mochas.”

     The coffee shop, as it turned out, didn’t have indoor seating for dogs, but Pumpkin was perfectly content to lie in the shade underneath Peridot’s chair and listen to the world go by. The air was hot and busy, and the two humans smelled of sunshine and butterflies, circling closer, closer to each other in the summer.

**Author's Note:**

> so this was a thing that's been knocking around in my head for a while now. i actually tried to write it a few months back and it was weird and i hated it, but i came back to it tonight for whatever reason and wrote the whole thing in like an hour lol
> 
> marking it as a oneshot for now, but i might come back to it later especially if you guys enjoyed it !!
> 
> please drop a comment // critique if you have two minutes to spare, it keeps me motivated <3


End file.
